1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a system and method that allows for the implementation of at least one unique virtual dynamically-capable (UVDC) address relating to mail and parcel delivery and forwarding.
2. Description of Related Art
Over the course of history an accepted practice was developed and adopted to match mail and parcels sent to an intended recipient. This practice was derived from the notion that a person only resided at one place or worked at one place and naturally could be found there to take delivery of any mail and parcel addressed for that person. Thus, the legacy model and practice of one address per person per physical location or per delivery point of mail and parcels was born. Socio-governmental convention has promulgated this model over the years and refined it into the form of the current postal mail delivery.
Early addresses included such labeling as: Deliver to Jane Doe, who lives in the house with the green roof, next to the yellow windmill by the River Themes where Mill Creek enters the river. As time went on conventional addresses were refined as house and building numbering systems and street names took shape. As such, a person's address was in the town where they lived, at the house in which they resided, at the building where they worked, or at an accepted location/facility that acted as a general mail and parcel terminal holding area. As mail addressing and delivery mechanisms continued to be developed, both public and private mail and parcel delivery entities sprung up. Because the greater society needed to be served, governmental involvement took place, typically in the form of a Postal Service. With Postal Service involvement, addressing and mail and parcel delivery became more structured and formalized, with any private mail and parcel delivery entity following the rules and structures set forth by the Postal Service. This legacy model remains in effect to this day.
In essence, a legacy model address is a fixed physical location that corresponds to a house/building on a specific street, correlated to the name of the intended recipient of said mail and parcels. This model assumes that there is no “connectivity” between addresses, that each address is independent and has no relationship to any other address whatsoever. It further assumes that the delivery point, the physical location, the address, is fixed, even though the occupants of the address may change over time. So, when addresses, addressing and mail and parcel delivery concepts were being accepted into society the mobility of people, let alone addresses, was not a big concern.
Over time, people have become much more mobile, in a broader geographical sense, and the need for being able to take delivery of mail and parcels wherever a person was at the moment or wanted their mail and parcels to be, has grown significantly, especially in recent years. Transportation of people, as well as mail and parcels, quickly and efficiently, coupled with better and faster communication methods has caused this accepted legacy model to become increasingly obsolete. With people on the move, be it temporarily (business trips, vacation, work lifestyle) or permanently (residence relocation), they are failing to get desired mail and parcels where they want them, when they want them. As a result, the legacy addressing model cannot keep pace with the advances of society.
Attempts to meet this growing need, being based on this legacy model, have failed to fully embrace it, due to the inherent limitations of the legacy addressing model itself. These attempts have come in the form of mail/parcel receiving and forwarding operations (RFOs), ranging from single, stand-alone entities to corporate nationwide franchises, like Mail Boxes, Etc. or Parcel Plus, to simply having a P.O. Box at a local Post Office. (Note: In U.S. Postal Service terms, these RFOs may operate as a Commercial Mail Receiving Authority, as defined in its Domestic Mail Manual.) As will be shown below, any mechanism based on the legacy model cannot meet this new need; hence a new model is desirable.
To explain the shortcomings of these attempts to meet the increasing need for mail and parcels to be delivered wherever and whenever a person wants, a look at how a mail/parcel RFO works is presented. Simply put, a mail/parcel RFO provides a substitute address for a person, different from where that person lives or works, but still a fixed physical mail and parcel delivery point; the concept being that the RFO receives mail and parcels on behalf of a person and holds it/them until that person takes delivery. This is useful to people who will return to this same RFO to collect any mail and parcels being held for them, but barely useful to a person who will rarely, perhaps ever again, return to that RFO.
As a person needed to take delivery of mail and parcels in more geographic locations, an address was needed for each RFO located where the person needed their mail and parcels delivered. Each of these addresses was independent of the other, even if the facilities were of the same operating franchise. While this concept seems to solve the “where” issue, it certainly does not solve the “when” issue. Because of the when not being met, a person could have mail and parcels sent to one of their RFOs only to find that they would never be getting to that RFO to take delivery of any mail and parcels awaiting pick up there. This, of course, is quite problematic.
Additionally, wanting to get mail and parcels delivered to more than one physical delivery point and any geographic location using the mail and parcel RFO concept, means having an address for every RFO in every geographic location. While in theory the legacy model is scalable this way, in practice it is not. Practically speaking, having tens or hundreds of independent RFO addresses becomes quite difficult to manage.
Recognizing this shortcoming, these RFOs have also included mail/parcel forwarding. In this case, the address holder at a given RFO advises its operator where to send any mail/parcels the RFO receives for the RFO address holder. While on the surface, this attempt seems to ameliorate the deficiencies of having hundreds of RFO addresses to worry about, in actuality, it compounds them. This is because now at least two independent addresses are needed per mail/parcel forwarded to the final destination, whereas without the forwarding only one was needed. These addresses are for the RFO itself and the address of the delivery point desired in the geographic location specified. So again, to have mail and parcels arrive in different geographic locations, a corresponding number of independent addresses are needed, plus one; that of the RFO that does the forwarding.
Here is an example of how poorly such attempts fare when it comes to meeting a person's need of getting mail and parcels where they are wanted and when they are wanted. Jane Smith lives at 123 Main St., Alexandria, Va. 22307. She travels a lot due to work requirements. Recognizing this, she uses an RFO in each city she visits plus one in Alexandria, so she can get mail and parcels where she wants. Jane visits 22 cities a year. So she needs 23 addresses to get mail and parcels where she wants, 24 if her home address is counted. Since she does not know when she will be in each city, she finds it hard to know where to send mail to where she will be. She learns this lesson after having mail/parcels stranded for months at several RFOs until she can get back to each one as her job allows.
She then discovers that each of these RFOs not only receives mail for her, they can forward it too. Thinking she has made a breakthrough, for her next business trip, she tells RFOs 1–18, and 20–23 to forward her mail and parcels to RFO 19. To do this she has to contact all 23 operators of her respective RFOs. For all but RFO 19 she tells them to forward her mail and parcels to RFO 19. For RFO 19 she tells them to hold her mail and parcels for pick-up. No sooner does she get to the city where RFO 19 is, when she finds she now has to go to another city, to where RFO 12 is located. So she contacts each RFO with another set of instructions. And so it goes, until one day her boss tells her that her territory has been expanded to 122 cities! Jane gives up.